Fairest 11
Synopsis Dark history and high court intrigue are revealed as Rapunzel hatches a desperate plan to steal Tomoko’s soulfire back from the conniving shogun Ryogan. There’s murder, scheming, poisonings, safe-cracking, vengeful ghosts, treachery revealed in porcelain and a terrible, bloody invasion. Plot After Tomoko was taken away, Shogun Ryogan began using her Foxfire to enforce his will and influence the emperor to suit his interests. He also took an interest in a young, beautiful girl named Mayumi. When she refused him, he sliced open her cheeks with his sword, so that no one would call her pretty again. Rapunzel treated Mayumi's wounds, but knew she would have to get away. She travelled to the forests of the Hidden Kingdom, seeking out the hideaway of those Yokai who were exiled, including Tomoko. Her former lover was sick, requiring her Foxfire for her continued survival. She tasks Rapunzel with finding it in Ryogan's safe, which is protected by a puzzle lock. The plan had hinged on using Mayumi to get close to Ryogan and get the Foxfire herself, but overcome by depression at her disfigurement, she committed seppuku. Her ghost was said to haunt people, and that those who saw it would die horribly. Rapunzel suspected that those deaths were really poisonings by Ryogan. As an alteration to the plan, Rapunzel took on the name Okiku to please Ryogan, and wrote a new poem to commemorate it. The poem acted as bait, prompting Ryogan to speak with her in private about it. Over tea, she suggested that she was ready to seek another lover - perhaps in him. The tea, however, was drugged, and Ryogan collapsed, allowing Rapunzel to sneak into his chambers and attempt to open the safe. Unfortunately, she could not solve its puzzle. However, she did discover that a set of china bowls in his chambers were decorated with detailed plans for Ryogan's military strategy which would constitute a coup against the emperor, with the help of the Adversary. Unfortunately, Ryogan awoke and found her, beating her into submission and then throwing her battered body into a nearby well. In the meantime, Ryogan and the Adversary's armies soon made their advance on the emperor's palace, slaughtering everyone inside. At the end of the bloodbath, Ryogan's men would dump the corpses down the wells, forcing Rapunzel, who could not die to watch those people she had called friends decaying around her in the water. Unable to do much else, Rapunzel began eating her own hair, but could not keep it down. She vomited up the hair in the form of several bezoars, which began speaking to her cracked mind. She refused to listen to them, until one day, she heard Ryogan's voice nearby. Affixing the bezoars to her own hair, she used them as hand-holds to climb out of the well, and then took her revenge. Those bezoars she left behind, she forgot about, until now. Appearances in this issue Featured Characters * Rapunzel Antagonists * Tomoko * Mayumi * Seii Taishogun Ryogan Other Characters * Kappas Locations * Japan ** The Hidden Kingdom